Blood On His Soul
by Bil
Summary: There's more to Albus Dumbledore than just a merry twinkle and a fondness for sweets. Complete. Warning: not a happy fic.


**Blood On His Soul  
**Rating: PG  
Category: Angst.  
Content Warnings: Dark.  
Summary: There's more to Albus Dumbledore than just a merry twinkle and a fondness for sweets.  
Archive: Do not archive without permission.  
Disclaimer: _Harry Potter_ is owned by JKR, though you can't prove that anyone mentioned here actually comes from the books.

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Blood On His Soul**  
by Bil!

He balances the fate of a boy against the fate of a world. He knows this. He knows that if he fails there will be no one to pick up the pieces - and there will be many, many pieces.

He watches a boy grow up without love, and he allows it. For the freedom of a world, for a future without blood and pain and fear, he allows it. Even as he grieves for a boy lost alone in a friendless world, he allows it. He watches the boy from a distance, watches him grow older, watches the innate hope of childhood dim, watches the young eyes grow old, too old. His heart longs to go to the boy, to comfort him, to show him that there is more to the world than anger and hostility, but he can only watch.

There are others who know where the boy is, but he is the only one who knows how the child lives: shunned by his own family, by the people who should love him. He is the only one who knows, and it is better that way, better that only he is woken in the middle of the night by the fear that he is destroying a child. Better that when the boy grows up there is only one person to blame and to hate. Better that he alone bears the blood on his soul.

Sometimes it feels that he has made a bargain with the devil, that he has bartered away his soul in return for the freedom of a world. And worse, that he has bargained with that which was not his to give: he has offered up the boy's soul as well.

But that is his role: he makes the hard decisions so that others need not; he takes the blood on his hands so that others may remain clean. They don't even see the blood that stains his skin, but he knows it is there. He plays the part of the amiable, eccentric grandfather-figure, but it is not who he is. The blithe twinkle in his eye took him years to perfect, hours and hours spent standing in front of the mirror trying to capture the look of easy merriment, building up a mask behind which to hide. The fact that no one has yet realised it is artificial is the greatest acclaim he could ask for.

He needs his masks, for he plays chess against a mad opponent with living, breathing (dying) pieces. He pretends to be the genial, all-knowing benefactor when he is playing blindly on a chessboard cast mostly in shadow. He makes his moves guided by intuition, not knowledge, and mostly he chooses right. But he fears the day when he will fatally misstep, and can only hope that on that day he is the only one who pays for that mistake. He cannot let it be the boy, he cannot fail the boy. For if he fails the boy, if he destroys a child, then he is no better than his opponent. It doesn't matter what the reason, what the justification, if he destroys a child - even to save a world - how can he be any better than the one he fights? If he destroys the boy it will be his own end as well.

But he risks it, every day he risks it. He balances the boy upon a knife blade, risking a child's soul for the fate of a world. He hates himself, but he will not stop.

The price of a world: one old man's conscience, sacrificed on the altar of freedom and sanctified with the blood of one boy's pain. Perhaps it is worth it, or perhaps the price is too high. He pays it anyway. This is war, this chess game. It is a war for freedom and the right to exist, it is a war against anger and pain and fear, it is a war against all that hurts.

To fight that war, he must send people to their deaths. He must turn murderer and aide to murderers. He must trick and subvert and manipulate. He must leave a child to live a loveless life, hoping the boy is strong enough to survive it, then thrust the boy into the path of death and hope that one child can do what a dozen adults cannot. Freedom requires sacrifices, and he will make them - even those he has no right to make.

If this works, the boy will be a hero. If they win, then he and the boy - and all those who fight at their side - will be heroes. He will be the only one who does not deserve the acclaim; he, with such blood on his hands. If they win, he has only one plan: beg the boy's forgiveness. What will happen after that will depend on the boy (so much depends on the boy).

But he - manipulator, bargainer with other people's souls - _he_ will never sleep peacefully again.

_Fin _  
© Copyright 2004


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